Jean-Louis ScartezziniDirector of EPFL Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory (1994-present); Founder & Director of ENAC Institute of Infrastructures, Resources and Environment (2002-2009); Founder & Director of EPFL Doctoral Program in Environment (2002-2009); Co-Director of EPFL Institute of Building Technology (1994-1997); Associate Professor of Building Physics at EPFL (1994-1997); Associate Professor of Building Physics at University of Geneva (1990-1997); Group Leader & Research Fellow at the EPFL Solar Energy Research Group (1981-1989); Research Fellow at the Applied Geophysics Institute of University of Lausanne (1980-1981).
Armel Firmin Kemajou MbiandaTravail en cours
La construction des périphéries urbaines en Afrique subsaharienneSelon la Banque mondiale, les villes africaines connaîtront un doublement de leur population en 2040 et un triplement en 2050 pour atteindre environ 1,5 milliards d'urbains (Lall, 2017). La dimension de ces prévisions donne toute sa mesure quand on les rapporte à l'espace dans lequel elles se réaliseront. Elles deviennent même très vite alarmantes, car aujourd'hui déjà, les villes d'Afrique subsaharienne n'arrivent pas à offri
Paola ViganòTeaching & PhD PhD Students Noélie Marion Charlotte Lecoanet, Shyam Sunder Sirimalla Past EPFL PhD Students Roberto Sega, Antoine Vialle, Tommaso Pietropolli, Sylvie Tram Nguyen, Anna Karla De Almeida Milani, Elena Calafati, Flore Jeanne Marie Andrea Guichot Courses Hidden rivers PENS-219 Hidden Rivers aims at fulfilling the need for an interdisciplinary understanding of the problematics surrounding urban streams, through ecological, hydrological, and spatial relationships found in riversc
Florence Graezer BideauSenior Lecturer and Senior Scientist at the College of Humanities and at the School of Architecture, EPFLVisiting Professor at the Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino PhD in History and Civilization (EHESS, Paris) Director of the Minor in Area and Cultural Studies (MACS) between 2012 and 2016Member of the Research group Heritage, culture and the cityAssociated researcher at the China Room Research Group and South China-Torino Collaboration Lab, Politecnico di Torino Associate member of the Laboratoire d’anthropologie culturelle et sociale (LACS), UNIL Member of the EDAR committee (Doctoral Program Architecture and Sciences of the City) at the School of Architecture, Civil and Environment Engineering in EPFL Florence Graezer Bideau trained as an anthropologist and a sinologist, and received her PhD in History and Civilization in 2005. Before joining the Centre for Area and Cultural Studies (CACS) at EPFL in 2010, she was a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Lausanne, where she taught courses in cultural theory and fieldwork methodology. She is Senior Lecturer and Senior Scientist at the College of Humanities where she teaches area studies, anthropology of China, critical heritage studies and urban studies. She has been acting as Director of the Minor in Area and Cultural Studies between 2012 and 2016 and she is currently a member of the EDAR committee (Doctoral Program Architecture and Sciences of the City) at the School of Architecture, Civil and Environment Engineering in EPFL. Since 2015, Florence has also been Visiting Professor at the Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino, Italy. Her fields of expertise include anthropology of China, urban sociology, modes of sociability and governmentality. Florence’s research is on the relation between culture and power (making of cultural policy in China; emergence of maker movement (makerspaces) and politics of innovation in China), heritage issues (process of heritagization and multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore; implementation of the UNESCO Convention for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in Switzerland; historic urban landscape in heritage policy of Beijing, Rome and Mexico City), and the making of the city (informal resistances toward the violence of urbanism in Caracas, Chennai and Guangzhou; uses of public spaces in Chinese new towns).
Sergi Aguacil MorenoExpertise
- Architecture, energy, building physics and environment- Integration of innovation in buildings | Smart Living Lab- Managing complex projects- Linking research and practice | Research infrastructures- Integrating sustainability into architectural projects- Life cycle assessment and environmental impact studies- Integration of photovoltaic energy in buildings | Renovation and new construction projects | ActiveInterfaces- Multi-criteria studies and assessments
Education PhD in Architecture | A
Ander Audikana ArriolaBio
Ander Audikana is a postdoctoral research fellow at Lasur conducting research on European mobility and transport policy. Ander received a PhD in Sociology from Paris-Est University in July 2012 with a dissertation on the politics of high-speed rail in Spain. Between August 2012 and April 2013, Ander was Fulbright-Schuman scholar at George Mason University and University of California, Berkeley. He holds a Master in City and Regional Plannning from University Paris 12 and Sociology degrees both from Écol
Philippe ThalmannPhilippe Thalmann was born in Lausanne in 1963. He graduated in Economics from the University of Lausanne in 1984, where he earned a postgraduate diploma in Economics in 1986. Mr. Thalmann entered the doctoral program in Economics of Harvard University (Cambridge, U.S.A.) in 1986, which he completed with a Ph.D. in 1990. His dissertation is entitled: "Essays in the Economics of Government Revenues and Spending". Returning to Switzerland, he was hired as an assistant professor first at the University of Geneva (teachings in Public Economics), then at the University of Lausanne (teachings in Econometrics and Introductory Economics). Since 1994, Mr. Thalmann is associate professor of Economics as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne.
Mathias LerchAss. Prof. Mathias Lerch heads the Urban Demography Laboratory (URBDEMO) at the Faculty of Natural, Architectural and Build Environment (ENAC), Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). To improve understanding of urban population growth, Lerch has developed multi-disciplinary research interests in the components of demographic change (mortality/health, fertility and migration), as well as in their interactions with socioeconomic and environmental developments.
Before joining the EPFL, Lerch has acted as the deputy head of the Laboratory of Fertility and Well-Being at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. He has analyzed and taught population change at various Swiss and German universities, as well as at statistical offices, often in transition countries. Since 2008, he has regularly advised national governments, United Nations entities, survey programs and NGOs on population issues and data collection.
Claudia Rebeca Binder SignerClaudia R. Binder, a Swiss, Canadian and Colombian citizen, was born in Montreal and spent most of her childhood in Switzerland and Colombia. She studied at ETH Zurich from 1985 to 1996, earning a degree in biochemistry and then a PhD in environmental sciences. After conducting her post-doctoral research at the University of Maryland in the US from 1996 to 1998, she returned to Switzerland and took a position as a senior research scientist at ETH Zurich, studying the interaction between human and environmental systems at the Institute for Natural and Social Science Interface. In 2006, Binder joined the University of Zurich as an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, and in 2009 moved to the University of Graz in Austria where she served as a full professor of systems science. In 2011, she took a position at the University of Munich’s Department of Geography as a full professor of human-environment relations.
Binder joined EPFL in March 2016 and set up the Laboratory for Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems (HERUS) at ENAC; she also holds the La Mobilière Chair on Urban Ecology and Sustainable Living.
Her research involves analyzing, modelling and assessing the transition of urban systems towards sustainability. She looks in particular at how we can better understand the dynamics of urban metabolism, what characterizes a sustainable city, and what drives and hinders transformation processes. She does so by combining knowledge from social, natural and data science. Her research focuses on food, energy, and sustainable living and transport in urban systems.
In Switzerland, Binder was appointed to the Research Council, Programs Division of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) in 2016 and serves on the Steering Committee of the SNSF’s National Research Program 71, “Managing Energy Consumption” and the Swiss Competence Centers for Energy Research (SCCER). She is also a member of the Steering Board on Sustainability Research for the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, she was elected as a member of the University Council of the University of Munich (LMU).
At EPFL, Binder is the academic director of Design Together, a cross-disciplinary teaching initiative. She was appointed to the management team of the Energy Center in 2018 and as head of the working group on EPFL’s energy and sustainability strategy in 2019.
Ankita SinghviAnkita Singhvi studies circular economy for cities and is currently a PhD candidate at EPFL (Prof. C. R. Binder, HERUS).
Ankita received her BSc degree in Architecture from the Technical University Delft in 2017. She graduated with a design proposal for the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam that examined the ageing of materials in the built environment. Her interest in climate adaptation led her to pursue a MSc in Industrial Ecology from Leiden University and TU Delft. She graduated in 2020 with honours, with a thesis on resilience in grey and nature-based infrastructure for coastal protection.
During her studies, Ankita interned at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at Circle Economy. After graduation, she worked at LDE Centre for Sustainability, bridging science with practise. She coordinated the Circular Industries Hub, where she supported companies in their transition towards the principles of a circular economy. She collaborated on two research projects: “Securing Critical Materials for Critical Sectors: Policy options for the Netherlands and the European Union” (2021) and “Opportunities for resilient supply chains in a post-COVID-19 era: Lessons from the Dutch High Tech sector” (2021).
Ankita continues her work within the context of circular resource use at HERUS, EPFL. Her research focuses on the role of circular economy in urban and territorial transitions towards sustainability.
